To make a short story even shorter: no promotions this week, and a few kicks because of inactivity. Further more NaomiAzzet decided to stop playing SS2 and internet games alltogether so she left us. Fortunately Lubo took over her job handling the medals. Good Luck to you.

  Faction store and recalling by DrgnMastr on Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:08 pm (taken with permissions of the original author from the internal RedCell forum)

Most Factions offer a Faction Store for common storage. The store usually shows items that are available immediately, but it is often NOT the complete inventory of Faction equipment.

The purpose of this text is provide a short tutorial on how to maximize the use of the Faction Store and ALL the available faction inventory.

Nomenclature: Commands to be clicked will be placed in <...>. For example, <Faction> would imply to click on the word Faction.

1. Start by clicking on <Faction> to the left of your window. This will open the hierarchical faction menu.

2. Click on <Manage>. This opens the Faction Window, which has several parts. For the sake of this tutorial we will be focusing on the "Faction Store" at the bottom right of this pane.

The Faction Store has five basic click-able areas, each will be covered a bit later:

[Manage] = To store an item from your backpack in the common faction storage.
+ = LOCK or TAG an item in the Faction Store.
- = UNLOCK or UNTAG an item in the Faction Store.
! = REPORT on Faction Tagged inventory and RECALL an Item for personal use. (Most important, please see < ! > in the Commands Section, below.)
Item Boxes = Takes that item to your backpack
The Faction Store and the Inventory Listings are for the benefit of the whole faction. By using these tools effectively, one has access to equipment that one often cannot afford to create or purchase. Most of the Equipment have come from donations by faction members as they gather equipment of their own at higher levels. However, the faction tries to have some very good equipment available for all faction members.

In general, equipment is faction tagged (or locked). In other words, the equipment now belongs to the faction:
• can be used by members;
• can be recalled from other members as required; and,
• can't be sold by anybody before it is untagged.
That is, if you have a tagged item you can't sell it, nor can you give it away to a non-faction player...

The basic philosophy is:

Before your hunt, look at the equipment report and the faction store, and select the items best suited for your current level and class.


Recall only those that you will need for your hunt. You are looking for weapons that cause the maximum damage for your level, and the best armour that you can find. Don't hesitate to recall an item printed in grey (i.e., in a backpack) from a higher level player at any time. However, the ones in bold green are equipped, and should only be recalled if the player if off-line. (Most important, please see < ! > in the Commands Section, below.)


Before you have completely depleted your energy and sign-off, make sure that the items are all repaired to full level (100/100). Failure to repair Faction items is a breech of Faction rules, and is subject to reprimands.


REFERENCE

Assuming you have the Faction Pane open (<Faction> + <Manage>) and are looking at the bottom left of the pane, that is the Faction Store. Each command will now be covered in detail.


PRIVILEGES (Faction Specific):

The following ranks are Red Cell Faction specific, and have increasing privileges:
On Probation
Initiate
Member
Agent
Sentinel
Agent in Command (AIC)
Faction Founder (FF)
COMMANDS:

In the list of commands, that follow, the minimum required privilege level will be noted by the command.

< [ Manage ] > -- Member+
The [Manage] function allows one to store one or more items from their backpack in the common faction store. One can only store as many items as there are free boxes in the store. By clicking on [Manage], another window opens up, with check boxes beside your backpack items. Click in a check box (or more), and then click on <Store Selected>. The checked items will be transferred to the faction store.

< + > -- Agent+
The "+" function allows an item in the Faction Store to be locked (or Faction Tagged). A tagged item now belongs to the Faction, and can be tracked as to who has it, and recalled for use by another person. There is a cost with tagging an item, but this comes from the faction bank. It is strongly suggested that any crafted, fluxed, or augmented item to be retained by the faction be immediately tagged after inserting it in the faction store. It is also suggested that one checks with the armorer (currently the AIC) to see if the item is desired by the faction.

< - > -- AIC and FF only
The "-" function allows an item in the Faction Store to be unlocked (or untagged). This frees up the item to be sold or have augmentations done to it. Normal members will NEVER use this function.

Item Boxes -- Initiates+
Clicking on any item in a boxes transfers it to your own backpack, so that you can use it or store it.

< ! > -- Member+
**************
This is probably the most important section of the whole document. By clicking on "!", one is presented the equipment inventory owned by the faction, and who is either using it or storing it. The list is displayed alphabetically by group member, showing which items each group member has, and whether it is equipped or just stored.

Items in Bold green text indicate the item is currently equipped (or worn) by the player.
Items in gray text indicate the item is in the person's backpack.

If the item is GRAY, it can be recalled anytime.
If the item is GREEN and the user is OFFLINE, it can be recalled.
If the item is GREEN and the user is ONLINE, prior consent must be given before it can be recalled.

By clicking on any item, that item is immediately recalled to the Faction Store, assuming there is an empty box to receive it. If there is not an empty box, then nothing happens. Once the item has been recalled to the faction store, it is available for anyone to transfer it to them, by clicking on the item.

After your hunt, and before you have run out of energy or leave, please stop at a repair centre, and repair all faction items to full 100/100 capability. THIS IS REQUIRED so that the next person that needs the equipment doesn't have to repair it before using it. After all, the damage on the equipment happened on your hunt. If one is offline and the Faction Equipment is not at 100/100 durability, it is considered an infraction.


**********
In summary, the Faction Store and Inventory are probably the greatest benefit to an individual player belonging to a faction. Used properly, it allows one the loan and use of some of the best equipment around, while hunting and levelling.


POSTSCRIPT:

The Red Cell Faction, maintains a Faction Spreadsheet which contains three sheets, selectable at the bottom of the window:

Rank Permissions shows the privilege levels and tax rate for each of the ranks.

Faction Gear is a list of the Red Cell Equipment with specifics on level, bonuses, enhancements, and resistance.

Faction Item Misconduct is where all failures to repair Faction equipment are noted, with the assigned reprimands.

DrgnMastr

Ill keep this even shorter than the previous ones due to RL:

New Sentinels: -none-
New Agents: Mr Dorian, Mantodea
New Members: th3crims
New Initiates: viper4683, KierPier, japanai
On Probation: Nitron, rygon, Natemck

On the medals: It seems hard to find some reliable artists (and thats the nicest way to say it...). Yeah, some articles are finished and i will post them here in this blog as well. Have a look and leave your comments...

Yesterday was the day for the promotions and demotions. Ill make it short again:
New Sentinel: NaomiAzzet
New Agents: hypergrave
New Members: deepthyman, Ariapro, Mantodea
New Initiates: glame3000
On Probation: Caseygun
Leaves: Crast, draggo

Hope i got you all ;).

If you have read carefully the last few promtion texts you will have noticed that we have now a new rank - Sentinel. This was planned for the last few weeks now. On the ranks page it is allready implemented, but now with the first ones chosen the work can start for the Red Council. More on the leadership structure can be found there under the ranks section.

While the daily business seems to go on like always in SS2 (subleveling and waiting for content...) we have some projects going on in our forums, mainly dealing with introductions to some facettes of the game. The first one is written by fred123qwe (basic introduction with tips for the newcomer) and a more specialized text from DrgnMastr (covering the handling of the faction store and recalling). I hope we can publish some of these texts here in the blogs...
-Nestor-

Yesterday I could hand out a lot of medals to Red Cell. We can be proud to have so many active players in our faction. A lot of members passed the line of 50.000 XP and got themselves a Bronze Medal of Excellence. For them a new challenge can be found in getting the Silver Medal. Or maybe they like another, like the shiny medal of Contribution.
Nobody has yet achieved a Medal of Teamplayer, for joining 50 squads. I'm curious who'll be the first, and when it can be handed out. My guess it's not next week, but the week after
Also I was very happy that this time I cannot only give, but also receive a medal myself.

All of you: Congratulations!

Medals
Biotom: a Bronze Medal of Victory!
DrgnMastr: a Silver Medal of Skillcaster!
fred123qwe: a Bronze Medal of Contribution and a Bronze Medal of Sponsoring!
Kearon: a Silver Medal of Excellence!
MrDorian: a Silver Medal of Excellence!
NaomiAzzet: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
Nitron: a Bronze Medal of Excellence and a Bronze Medal of Contribution!
Piurivar: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
poisongirl: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
ShuShu: a Bronze Medal of Excellence!
th3crims: a Bronze Medal of Victory!

As for the trophies, DrgnMastr added another 10 levels to his name, which is only 2/3 of last weeks, so we are disappointed. It's the most of any in the faction, so he can keep the Trophy of Evolution another week.
Astonishingly (for me, at least) is that I get the Trophy of Victory for gaining most in PvP. I don't even like PvP, but I found that when you meet someone in a PvP-zone it works better to attack them first. That way you win.
Maybe this is a tip for Kearon as he's the one that lost most in PvP this week.

Trophies
Trophy of Evolution - DrgnMastr! (+10 levels)
Trophy of Victory - NaomiAzzet! (+41)
Trophy of Consolation - Kearon! (-32)

Recruting?
Its basically a process of harvesting new souls. Clicking on random player names from an online list, and inviting them to your faction. Instinctively you seek for lower level players that are above minimal required level to join your faction. So you start to click at names of players that are lvl 10 til 19, guessing that its far more likely to find a lower level player without a faction, than a higher level player. But your math is wrong. Why?
Because almost 75 % of level 5 - 15 players have allready started and founded their own faction (Im boring even myself, but - ).

Why is this so?
I assume because 75 % of these players are under 18 years in age, not realizing that founding a faction is only the first step. And HCS made faction founding so damn easy. But thats the only thing that is easy and cheap. Starting a faction will cost you nothing, and prequesites in doing so is just that you need to be level 5.
But once you started a faction, you have to invest a lot of real money (per example you need 75 FC just to unlock an extra building slot for your faction), real time, and a lot of mind (intellectual work) in developing that faction in to a living organisation.

So its quite fair to conclude that those factions are doomed to stagnate at their very creation. But hey, i dont mind or have anything against kids. Its not their fault, its HCS's fault.

By making faction founding so easy, they enabled an accumulation process of worthlesssmall, futureless and hopeless factions. Sigma storm 2, has maybe 190 000 registered players, and God knows how much factions.

A bundle of useless and futureless factions does not help anyone.
1) HCS won't get money donation from faction founder kids, cause they'll never upgrade an extra structure and/or extra 1 % tax rate etc.
2) Other factions are losing recruting material and a lot of low level players ( kids ) who are foolishly trying to found perspective and bright new factions.
3) The low level (underaged) players themselves are beeing led trought the path of false hope that they will be able to manage and save their factions from certain fall. Allthough they could be a valuable and respectable members of "real" factions.

How is this a problem for recruiting ?

Because is anti-evolutional. We have to admit that sigma storm is somewhat evolved game with top players from lvl 50 to 55. Those players when they were lvl 5 - 20 founded or joined their factions.
Game evolved, new players came. And lvl 5 - 20 became a players who should join, not start factions.
To prevent beeing misunderstood, i have to state that i have nothing against new factions.
But i do when it become a trend. A childhis trend of starting/founding factions with no future. By endulging such a trend, lot of potential recruits, are lost due to their starting of their own factions.
Am i right ? Or do i really have a lot of extra time, and need to find myself a second girlfriend ?

Mr Dorian

Promotionday, once more. After the last weekend where we had all kinds of promotions and demotions this week is more quiet. At least considering the promotions. No new agents, 2 new members and a few kicks together with a new one on probation, unfortunately:

New Agents: -none-
New Members: Biotom, draggo
New Initiates: deepthyman, madusa98, Mantodea, ryanrsunga, th3crims
On Probation: Crast
Leaves: XxSmileyxX, NonnoNaz, mxok

Congratulations for all promoted/new to Red Cell, and good luck to all who left. Furthermore the Sentinels will hopefully be installed this weekend/during the week; all preparations have been made and votes are ongoing. With the implementation of the Red Council Red Cell has established the final hierarchy for the faction!

-Nestor-

I know, not an original title but it matches; once more a promotion day with all the action: promotions to agent, promotions to member, demotions and kicks. And im glad that draggo came back, hes reinstalled as an initiate. So here is what goes on:

New Agents: DrgnMastr, Nitron, poisongirl
New Members: crast, hypergrave, XxSmileyxX, thezed
On Probation: NonnoNaz, Natemck
Leaves: snyly

Congratulation to all promoted members, and good luck for the ones leaving Red Cell. And since we have new places for Initiates, recruiting is once more open.
Besides the Promotions we installed a new ranking system, visible at the respective page. A new rank - Sentinel - has been introduced and will become fully functional in the next week or so. This should enable Red Cell to stay up with future development regarding their "fanbase" ;). As always - leave comments here, i would higly appreciate them!
-Nestor-

Yes, once more we implemented a new feature to our faction Red Cell. Medals and Trophies. As you can see on the Members page  Naomi holds the job of "Award Management", and she did and does an excellent job on this.
The first medals and trophies implemented are as follows:

Long time medals:
Medal of Excellence - XP contributed
Medal of Victory - PvP Rating
Medal of Contribution - Credits contributed
Medal of Sponsoring - FC contributed
Medal of Skillcaster - Skills cast
Medal of Teamplayer - Squads joined

Weekly Trophies:
Trophy of Evolution
Trophy of Victory
Trophy of Consolation

Graphical representations for these awards are coming shortly, and will be presented here on this webpage :)

So for the future i not only have to update the the members page for the ranks, but also the medals and trophies - a job im fine with :)
~Nestor~

This promotions day entry will be short, since im short on time. Now for the really important things:

New Agents: Piurvar, ShuShu
New Members: DrgnMastr, Nitron, poisongirl, rygon, snyly, Natemck
On Probation: -
Leaves: Fenix

Congratulation to all promoted members, and good luck for the ones leaving Red Cell. Natemck stepped down from Agent to member on own behalf. Another important thing: The secondary ranks in Red Cell (AKA factionjobs ;) are now in place: Awards management and Armorer have been occupied allready. Now fred123qwe joined as the new Human resources boss. Good luck to him :)
-Nestor-